Melissa Mularski says:

Low wattage, user-friendly, nice looking outdoor lighting These are great kits. The light is not incredibly bright, but much more so than solar lights, and this light won’t go out after a couple hours!We started with 3, and now have 5 kits — we’re using almost all the lights, but we’ve tested all of them and they all work. The housings are strong black plastic. The coach light “glass” is frosted clear plastic. A couple of the coach lights have already been run into by our kooky Chocolate Lab, but they survived without a scratch (she’s broken more than a few of the stakes under solar lights from her overzealous games of fetch). Make sure you use a rubber mallet to gently hammer the coach light stakes into the ground; don’t force them in or stomp on them to set them in place. They’re sturdy plastic, but I’m sure you could break one if tried hard enough.Low voltage doesn’t necessarily mean low wattage. But that IS the case with these kits — each comes with just a 20 watt transformer, and because of the low wattage of the lights (I think the coach lights are 1w, 1.5w for the spotlights), you can fit MANY more lights on a transformer than that which comes in one kit. We have two transformers set up in the back yard — I was explaining to our kids that now 21 coach and spotlights we have running off those two transformers use the same amount of power as ONE of the four 40w bulbs in our main bathroom. (The rest of our house has CFLs…the one bathroom just has funky lights that don’t have a good CFL equivalent yet.)Anyway, yes, they’re low wattage. But they give off a decent amount of light to outline a pathway or show off trees, shrubs, or anything neat you want to spotlight in the night. Just remember, as they ARE LED lights, they are very mono-directional and very bright white, as opposed to a warmer yellow light. This initially bothered me, and I looked for ways to “de-white” them, but frankly it’s grown on me and I like the light they give off now.The lights are ultra-easy to set up, and the black cords can be hidden under mulch or tucked into a thin trench in the ground.We had one area in our front yard where we needed a long stretch of wire between two lights. We’d bought 5 light kits, and we only needed 3 of the 5 transformers for our light configurations. Incidentally, the length of the wire between the first light and the transformer is substantially longer than the length of wire between the lights. So the first light in your string won’t need to be right next to an outlet.Using one of our spare 20w transformers, this is how my husband made a longer section of wire between two lights:1. He cut one of the transformers off of a stretch of wire (the wire connected to the transformer is a lot longer than the ones between the lights). Meaning, we weren’t going to use the plug on this transformer anymore; like I mentioned we ended up with extras.2. On the light that we wanted the longer wire, he cut off the screw plug at the end.3. He spliced the wire attached to the light (with the plug end cut off) to the wire that was cut off from the transformer (with its plug end attached). To do this he used a crimping tool and heat shrinkable insulated butt splice (it’s a metal crimp connector). These two items should be available in most hardware store electrical departments. Make sure your crimping tool can also strip wires (crimper/stripper), and make sure the butt splice (crimp connector) you use is weather-tight and can be buried; most cannot. Strip both of the cut wires with the crimping tool, and follow the directions on the butt splice to splice the two ends together. Look up a ‘how to strip & crimp wires’ online for tutorials on this — it’s not really difficult if you have the right tools.If you need tips on splicing the wires or anything let me know; I’m sure I can get my husband to give more tips on his wire MacGyver-ing.We did a lot of landscaping this summer, and the added outdoor lighting has been the perfect finishing touch to our work.

dukesmom says:

They look GREAT!! I bought these for my mom who has had the solar lights in glummie Wa., they are great we don’t have to depend on the sun. Easy to install nice frosted lite, still brighter than regular low voltage lights. Also I like the fact that it is very cheap to run all year.